Week Ending 5/2/2015: Random Notes and Portfolio Review

I missed a home run last month and it hurt. Impac Mortgage (IMH) was the one. I’ve been following that stock on and off for 3 years. A week before earning came out, I had a hunch 1Q15 was going to be a good quarter, so I sat down, went through a rather detailed model and looked over my projected 1Q15 earnings. I passed, thinking the was not worth the risk and reward. When the actual earning came out it was a multiple of my forecast!! I was stunned  (I got the volume pretty much right on but was way off on the margin!). The stock ran up 100%+ in past month alone. Never have I put in that much work in a stock and turned out that wrong before. I mean if I was a portfolio manager at some fund and had a hunch about this stock, and I got my sector analyst to take a deep dive. He comes back saying it's a no go, then the stock goes up 100%...this is the sort of stuff that could get you fired.

So that hurt my confidence. That and the fact that I’ve been very uneasy with the market made me go through my portfolio again.


Healthcare portfolio.  This is a multi-leg investment to capture the long term trend in America’s aging population. I have a mix of managed care, hospitals, pharmaceuticals, and supply chain players that balance out each other.

Managed care ran up a lot in 1Q15 and was a major contributor to my out performance year to date. I decided to cut this down a little bit due to full valuation. I also see near term risk in the next year as we get closer to election year and Republicans will undoubtedly make some noise about Obamacare. But overall this healthcare portfolio is a very long term play and there’s nothing here that I would think of selling if the overall market drops 50% tomorrow.

That said, after a very successful run the past year, my expected return in the next few years is not great – maybe mid/high single digit annualized return. So if something with better risk and reward comes alone I could pare this down further.


Housing portfolio.  This is really more like housing finance and is a mix of title insurance, originator/servicers, mortgage REITS and mortgage heavy banks. The big picture idea is to go long household formation and existing home sales in the next 5-10 years. Unlike the healthcare portfolio, there are some pretty speculative names in here like Nationstar, PennyMac Financial, AGNC…etc. But I’ve cut them down to a point where I’m pretty comfortable for all remaining positions, and certainly on a portfolio basis. 

The core group here is title insurance, which I went through recently thinking about adding. Unfortunately the group look fairly valued. In terms of technicals, Fidelity National Financial (FNF) is a name showing some weaknesses. It is hovering around its resistance level and could see a big break on the downside if next Monday’s earning turn out to be a bust. If that happens I will simply take it on the chin. 

Tankers. I cut down some TNK and bought some more DHT. In the past few weeks TNK stock price has moved up to a point it became too large of a position. I'm also worried that Aframax sector (which TNK is heavy in) will not benefit as much as say VLCC or Suezmax sector. Hence the rotation into DHT, which owns mostly VLCC and Suezmax ships. Luckily, I did this adjustment right before TNK stock took a beating the past few days. The tanker trade is ~6% of my total portfolio and I have 4 stocks sharing the risk. What's preventing me from getting bigger here? 1) This is obviously a very speculative trade and cannot be long term. 2) Global crude oil demand is highly dependent on China, so the tanker trade is to some degree a long China trade -- and I'm already very long China in the portfolio.


Beijing Enterprises Holdings (392.HK). This ran up some 20% and I kept adding to my position on the way up. Although the gain is mostly due to extremely lucky timing, this is a very long term investment for me. I would consider adding more Chinese gas distributors, but only at the right price.


One big China/HK trade basket. Welling (382.HK) has ran up dramatically and I also added on the way up. But I see less upside here and will likely take my profit if the HK market takes a turn for the worse. In recent weeks I piled in and added a mix of indices and (mostly infrastructure) stocks to capture an expected spike in liquidity as well as A-H share premium.

But now that H-shares momentum has flattened out, I’m very worried about the A-share bubble popping and how that might spill over to H-shares. I'm actually investigating ways to short China as a whole while staying long in my current H-share positions, which are all reasonably valued if not outright cheap. I have tight stop losses on every one of these trades and will let the market decide for me.

Updating my views on Apple and Google:

Apple. I’m kind of surprised that the stock did not move that much given the very strong quarter. Demand for the stock could be exhausted. Part of my thesis is a "short squeeze" for those who still don't own AAPL and lags the index as a result. I now see that even a $200bn capital return plan cannot scare the implicit shorts. My original thesis could be flawed and I may cut down or exit instead.

Google. I’m holding on despite the temptation to exit given the persistently negative market sentiments here. I did some rough numbers again. My timeframe is 5 years for this. What’s the worst case? Conservatively, I think EPS can grow 8% a year. It is unlikely to be less given the solid top line growth runway and how much room they have to cut cost, and everything I know of Google.

• 5 years from now EPS would be up 47%. But let’s say 1yr forward multiple (ex-cash) goes down to 17, that would be roughly an -18% hit. Combine EPS gain and multiple loss yields ~29% total return in 5yr, which would be about 5-5.5% CAGR. That is my worst case. 
• On the other hand I think the upside is double in 5yr or about 15% IRR. 
• Given the strong expected EPS growth, forward PE would have to drop to 12x at 2020 for me to lose money. 
• So I’m holding on to this. But maybe get smaller if price moves against me.

The exposures I listed above add up to almost 70% of my portfolio. I’m in the process of revisiting my entire investment approach and don’t expect to add new names. If the market crashes 30% tomorrow, the exposures I'm less sure about (roughly half of what I listed above) would be stopped out, leaving the real long term positions intact.